mtb camping weekend

Posted on 22 Mar 2011 | 0 comments

A friend (Nathan) of a friend (Sarah) of a friend (Jonno) was organising a weekend camping with mtb’s in the area behind Mt Coot-tha. This sounded like an excellent excuse to get the mtb out of the mothballs and explore the area with somebody who knows the tracks – or so I thought.

It was an excellent idea to get the mtb out of the mothballs, it was a great way to explore the area (our backyard pretty much) behind Mt Coot-tha and it was something I had never done before (taking a tent in a backpack on the bike for a weekend of camping). However, it wasn’t with somebody who knew the tracks…

ready to go – still clean, warm and only mildly damp

But he had the tracks on his iphone and downloaded a route from somebody else which all we had to do was follow. Great plan, but very hard to execute when it is pissing it down with rain and your iphone goes flying into the bush at some point…

not so clean, warm and dry anymore…

the crew (Jonno, Zoe, Nathan, Jude, Stefan, Claire and Sarah

determined to keep riding up…

oh hello cute long neck turtle

we all join the hike up to our shelter

We did manage to find most of the way and by chance stumbled upon the Mt Nebo Rd which some people had been on before. So we decided to find a lookout with a shelter. We found one, in a very logical spot for a lookout, on top of this massive hill… Unfortunately we never saw any of the reasons why the lookout was there, but we did find a shelter big enough for 2 tents and all our gear, a cane toad, 2 friendly guys from the UAE who came for the views and a bunch of unfriendly French people who came for the party… but decided it wasn’t gonna be fun with us smelly bike people around and 2 tents parked in the dancefloor area.

the dishwasher

our great camp site – semi dry

The next day we rode back to the trail we should have been on (after a nice visit to the local winery), rode past our (planned) campsite and enjoyed more downhill than the day before. It was also mostly dry, which made for some warmer riding, but with quite a bit of mud still on the trails. Flying downhill without glasses is an interesting exercise!